We have used our newly developed MALDI-ion trap mass spectrometer to measure the fragmentation of carbohydrates. Both underivitized carbohydrates and carbohydrates linked to a specially designed carrier peptide were investigated. First results on more than ten complex carbohydrates (both neutral and acidic) indicated that the method has subpicomole sensitivity and is rich in sequence and composition information. A paper describing some aspects of this work has been published (Qin and Chait, Anal. Chem. 69, 4002-4009, 1997).